Broadcast Authentication for Resource Constrained Devices: A Major Pitfall and Some Solutions

Roberto Di Pietro, Fabio Martinelli, Nino Vincenzo Verde
2012 2012 IEEE 31st Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems  
Broadcast authentication is an important security mechanism for resource constrained devices, like Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In this paper we revise how broadcast authentication has been enforced in this context, and we show that most of the current implementations (generally based on lightweight hash chain implementing time limited validity of the authentication property) leave open the possibility of a dreadful attack. We detail such an attack, and propose three different protocols to
more » ... ope with it: PASS, TASS, and PTASS. We further analyze the overhead introduced by these protocols in terms of set-up, transmission overhead, and on device verification.
doi:10.1109/srds.2012.13 dblp:conf/srds/PietroMV12 fatcat:7wahfvjravazzd6zldzpoobrbe